TANTIN: TERRESTRIAL AND NON-TERRESTRIAL INTEGRATED NETWORKS-A COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGIES PERSPECTIVE FOR BEYOND 5G AND 6G
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TaNTIN: Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial
Integrated Networks-A collaborative
technologies perspective for beyond 5G and 6G
Muhammad Waseem Akhtar1 , Syed Ali Hassan1 , and
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University
arXiv:2101.08221v1 [cs.NI] 20 Jan 2021
of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan
engr.waseemakhtar@seecs.edu.pk, ali.hassan@seecs.edu.pk
∗
Corresponding authors: S. A.Hassan
Abstract. The world is moving toward globalization rapidly. Every-
body has easy access to information with the spread of Internet technol-
ogy. Businesses are growing beyond national borders. Internationaliza-
tion affects every aspect of life. In this scenario, by dispersing functions
and tasks across organizational borders, time and space, global orga-
nizations have higher requirements for collaboration. In order to allow
decision-makers and knowledge workers, situated at different times and
spaces, to work more efficiently, collaborative technologies are needed. In
this paper, we give an overview of potential collaborative technologies,
their benefits, risks and challenges, types, and elements. Based on the
conceptualization of terrestrial and non-terrestrial integrated networks
(TaNTIN), we highlight artificial intelligence (AI), blockchains, tactile
Internet, mobile edge computing (MEC)/fog computing, augmented real-
ity and virtual reality, and so forth as the key features to ensure quality-
of-service (QoS) guarantee of futuristic collaborative services such as
telemedicine, e-education, online gaming, online businesses, the enter-
tainment industry. We also discuss how these technologies will impact
human life in the near future.
Keywords: collaborative technologies· blockchain· 5G· 6G· e-learning·
telemedicine· globalization· video conferencing· LMS· CMS
1 Introduction
Collaboration is a process through which individuals work together inside or
outside of an organization to achieve certain goals effectively [1]. The parties
concerned share information, objectives, and resources and make decisions to-
gether. Collaboration can be a powerful tool for achieving objectives and sig-
nificantly increasing productivity. It is also a way of coordinating ideas for the
generation of knowledge from different people. The demand for collaborative
technologies has grown rapidly due to their potential to handle the dispersal
of business activities, such as offshore business communications, need to work
from home or remotely, online education, and remote interaction with customers.2 M.W. Akhtar et al.
These technologies can improve business strategies by increasing profit, revenue,
and market share by efficiently managing and streamlining complex business
processes. The demand for collaborative network technologies has exponentially
increased in the recent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The
business leader, around the world, are emphasizing especially how the team of
experts and decision-makers can work together more efficiently by leveraging
collaborative technologies.
With the fast development of the Internet technologies, it has become easy to
interconnect multiple applications. Collaborative technologies ensure that com-
panies, corporations, and businesses can convene remote employees in virtual
teams to execute a range of activities efficiently. Companies and staff from all
around the world can interconnect, exchange their knowledge, and engage eas-
ily in project activities. The Internet or other means of technology are used
to exchange information [2]. These collaboration strategies can reduce face-to-
face interaction and improve efficiency if properly applied. The staff involved
must gain teamwork expertise and be familiar with the processes. Collabora-
tion familiarity is an individual’s willingness to express and integrate his or her
thoughts with the team members to enhance the team’s performance. The user
plan provides a plethora of collaborative network applications. A vast number
of devices/internet-of-things (IoT) consisting of healthcare IoT, personal IoT,
industrial IoT, and sensors on autonomous vehicles and plans are also included
in the user plan. These devices and collaborative network applications generate
a huge amount of data on a daily basis, ultimately triggering enhanced mobile
broadband (eMBB), high spectral efficiency, massive machine-type communica-
tion (mMTC), high data rates and extremely reliable and low latency commu-
nication (URLLC) requirements [3]. The objective of the future communication
network, i.e., beyond the fifth (5G)/sixth (6G) generation, is to meet all these
requirements. Network inbox (NIB), Internet-of-everything (IoE), etc., are the
terminologies used for future communications networks in the literature [4].
In this paper, we introduce a novel terminology for a future communication
network that is terrestrial and non-terrestrial integrated networks (TaNTIN).
Conventional ground-based communication networks are identified by terres-
trial networks, while non-terrestrial networks consist of unmanned aerial ve-
hicles (UAV) and satellite communication systems, as well as maritime com-
munication, space communication, and underground communication networks.
Blockchains, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), holography, hap-
tics, augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), network slicing, network vir-
tualization, smart IoTs, software-defined networks (SDN), cloudification/fog,
etc., are the key enabling technologies that can be crucial to TaNTIN imple-
mentation. All these technologies are discussed in this paper and we focus on
how these technologies will help TaNTIN to be realized with a wide range of
collaborative network applications in B5G/6G systems.
We start by discussing the architecture of TaNTIN, benefits, risks, and lim-
itations of collaborative technologies in Section 2. Some key supporting and
enabling technologies are discussed in Section 3. Section 4 gives an overviewTitle Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 3
Smart Core Plan Smart Access Plan Smart User and application
(Empowered by (Empowered by Machine Learning and Plan
Machine Learning and blockchains)
Smart blockchains) amazon
Billing Satellite Laptop facebook
twitter
Overleaf
Aggregator UAV
Smart Careem
Uber
Gateway
Smartphone Office 365
Core
MEC
Scanner Skype TikTok
2G/3G/
Wireless Whatsapp
4G/NR/
Access Point Github
5G/6G Mobile
Cloud and IP Gitlab
Computing Youtube
Content From UAV Telephone Instagram
Other Terrestrial zoom
Fog
and Non-
Computing Smart Card WeChat
Terrestrial
Networks Reader Hologram
Fig. 1: An illustration of TaNTIN architecture for B5G/6G with collabora-
tive network technologies perspective. The key enabling technologies such as
blockchains, machine learning/artificial intelligence, MEC/fog computing, net-
work virtualization/slicing/softwarization, etc., play the key roles in realization
of collaborative technologies in future TaNTIN.
of elements of collaborating technologies and finally, we conclude our paper in
Section 5.
2 Architecture, Benefits, Risks, and Limitations
In this section, we describe the architecture of TaNTIN, benefits, risks, and
limitations. Fig. 1 depicts the architecture of TaNTIN with a collaborative net-
work technologies perspective. AI/ML-aided smart access plan ensures smooth
communication through the network.
Collaborating technologies have a lot of benefits for the participating entities.
These advantages include improvement in companies’ survival and the ability to
achieve more common objectives, excellence in individual expertise, access to
new/greater markets and expertise, exchange of new/greater markets capital,
incorporating additional talents and strengths.
Our companies require dealing with individuals, clients, staff, and strategic
partners. Employees and teams need to get the job done and pursue it. The ques-
tion is how to ensure that the process goes smoothly and how to accomplish the
job? That is why cooperation is crucial. With the enhancement of technologies,
without any geographical obstacles, people from all over the world can commu-
nicate and share ideas through the Internet. Collaborative technologies allow
valuable information to be shared by employees, partners, and clients. Also, the4 M.W. Akhtar et al.
lack of resources and knowledge are the main limitations of collaborative network
technologies.
It can present many challenges and risks if one relies only on collaborating
network technologies. The most obvious one is the time aspect. For example,
in the case of an e-mail, it can take hours or days to wait for someone to read
and reply to the message. In the meantime, valuable time and opportunities
are lost. Miscommunication and misinterpretation can also result from e-mail.
One sometimes needs to clear things out and nothing is accomplished by the
time taken for the exchange of messages. It might reduce productivity. There-
fore for our companies, we need a much better collaborative tool. Apart from
this, security, privacy, and unemployment are the potential threats of collaborat-
ing network technologies. In the next section, we give an overview of potential
network technologies for TaNTIN.
3 Key supporting and enabling technologies
In this section, we describe key enabling technologies for TaNTIN with the per-
spective of collaborative network technologies for the B5G/6G network.
3.1 Augmented reality and virtual reality
Besides, the simulated environment of virtual objects is aligned and superim-
posed on the physical world and is shared by users, so that during the col-
laborative meeting changes made to simulated objects are communicated to all
members and observable immediately. The state-of-the-art networking technolo-
gies for remote connectivity, such as audio/video and application-sharing, help
transcend the gap, showing the actual environments of remote parties.
3.2 Network slicing
Network operations generally work on the principle of simplicity and consistency.
Because of huge numbers of connected devices, the network receives more and
more data, and the networks are being overloaded. A telecommunication network
can easily be compared to the vehicular traffic network in big cities both in terms
of complexity and traffic volume. They both can also be managed similarly.
The flow of data packets in the telecommunication network is similar to cars
entering the cities both on streets and highways. However, the movement is not
smooth. There is a situation when traffic is concentrated in sensitive places. The
usual operation for maintaining the network cannot accommodate such a large
amount of incoming data. Network slicing can help the smooth and unblocked
flow of data traffic through the network in which each slice is a complete end-
to-end network that provides a wide range of services if required.Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 5
3.3 Network virtualization
In computing, the idea of virtualization refers to machine resource abstraction.
The most historic benefit of virtualization is the introduction of time-sharing
systems that in turn make the use of physical resources more effective. In com-
parison, the separation principle is also used with virtualization implementation,
which is viewed either as a fast deployment of package applications or as the
runtime separation for parallel incompatible applications operating on the same
physical infrastructure.
Virtualization made the operating system separate from the underlying hard-
ware for the first time. This functionality opened the door to the portability of
applications from hardware business to hardware.
3.4 Smart IoTs
IoT is known as a worldwide interconnected network of objects. Smart here in-
dicates the capacity or ability of the IoT to respond to complex situations, for
example, self-learning, and self-reliance. IoTs enhance the quality of living, to
name just a few: at home, on the street, on the road, while ill, at work, while
jogging, and at the fitness center. Healthcare IoTs can help monitor objects and
persons (both employees and patients), recognize and authenticate users, and
automatically capture the sensors’ data. data collected provide real-time infor-
mation to assist for medical diagnosis on patient health measurements. Complex
computations and vast numbers of data transfers are needed for IoT devices
which are not required within the standard sensor network [5].
3.5 Softwarization
In the present day, software-defined networks (SDNs) are becoming a hot technol-
ogy for the network’s new paradigm. The network control is decoupled from data
transmission. This change provides versatile scalability, programmability, high
service capacity, and handy maintenance across the network system. Edge com-
puting is being used to expand vehicle services by sharing computing activities
across boundaries and local terminals. By integrating SDN with edge computing
we can achieve the key performance indicators (KPI) of fifth-generation (5G)/
beyond 5G (B5G) networks.
3.6 Cloudification
We consider cloud computing to be a pay-per-use service that offers infrastruc-
ture, platforms, and software as a service (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS) [6]. Cloud
computing allows them to deter overprovision of information technology and
training staff in small and medium-sized businesses. Therefore, small to medium-
sized businesses will use a cloud if the Internet technology (IT) capability has to
be improved. In general, for programs that are only available for a specific time,
more resources are required. Becoming a cloud platform allowed businesses with6 M.W. Akhtar et al.
massive IT networks, including Google and Amazon, to deliver their services
respectively to the small to medium-sized industries, depending on pay-for-go
and subscription models.
3.7 Blockchains
While blockchain technology was proposed as the underlying Bitcoin technology
in Nakamoto’s Whitepaper in 2008, the principle was not frequently reported.
Blockchain technology has a range of features that are evaluated concerning
their interconnections and extract a selection of main features. For example, it
is believed that both the attributes of ”shared and public” and ”low friction”
improve system transparency because, without the control of a third party, the
information would be made accessible freely to participants. When looking at
the blockchain, two key aspects must be identified that evokes and decentralizes
the trust. It encourages its decentralization by providing a private, secure, and
scalable environment.
Blockchain technology allows participants to incorporate their own programs,
create and distribute their own code to shape their own environment to create an
open, diversified system. The so-called smart contract, a piece of code that holds
as the programmed contractual agreement between two parties is an example of
this feature.
In the next section, we highlight the elements of the collaborative technologies
in TaNTIN.
4 Elements of Collaborative Technologies
In this section, we discuss the major elements in the collaborative network tech-
nologies that can play a part in the realization of these technologies.
4.1 Mobile Phones and Laptops
The Internet has transformed our way of educating, studying, and gathering
knowledge. The exponential spread of smartphone and social media technol-
ogy has influenced the way whole generations think, interact, and function [7].
Increasingly, with the growth of the social technology revolution, our digital
lifestyle is shifting.
Presently, higher education is forced to educate the masses of various stu-
dents who demand both high-quality education and very interactive media. As
a consequence, it has become extremely difficult to teach this web-centric gener-
ation. The move of media giants is a more crucial indication that the Internet is
heading to a web experience! , Google, Apple Computer, Disney Internet Group,
and Sony will gradually provide their smartphone content for online education
to the students.Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 7
Table 1: Collaborative tools/technologies used in different sectors of humans’
life.
Education Finance/businesses
Health Entertainment/communication
– LMS, CMS – Amazone – Telemedicine – Facebook, Whatsapp,
– GitHub, Git-lab – Alibaba, Draz – Robotics WeChat
– Overleaf, Office 365 – Uber, Cream – Augmented/virtual – TikTok, Youtube, Instagram
– Zoom, Skype, MS – FoodPanda reality – Waze, Tencent
teams – Holography – Zoom, Skype, MS teams
4.2 Video Conferencing
For most major businesses and organizations, the willingness of staff to work
with remote partners is now important. The criteria for effective remote part-
nerships are established in decades of study. We observed that many aspects have
contributed to remote collaboration [8]. Quick and reliable visual real-time col-
laboration by video conferencing is combined with calendar applications, whereas
laptops with video conferencing capacity are offered to most Google employees
[8].
Video portals minimize connectivity behavioral costs and allow closely linked
remote work to be effective for the first time. While there are extensive prob-
lems in distributed meetings by technology, the distance between collocated and
remote interactions can be drastically minimized by a conjunction of collective
culture with sufficient facilities, software, and data access.
4.3 Online Gaming
Video gaming is a means of developing our students’ skills. Anthropologists, lin-
guists, physicists, geographers, sociologists, psychologists, and others have the
identifiable influence of new technology on social life [9]. Collaborative online
gaming environments can support several pedagogical techniques which can be
used as both constructivist and instructor learning environments, for example,
working together, students can work to their strengths, improve analytical rea-
soning ability and imagination, affirm their reasoning, and understand a wide
array of different styles, talents, and interests.
Online gaming networks offer a similar forum for working together and learn-
ing from others. Studies of recreational users of large multi-user multiplayer role
play games for example. The constructivist point of view also indicates that stu-
dents learn further by exploring and experiencing their own interpretations from
their encounters.8 M.W. Akhtar et al.
4.4 Instant Chatting
With the evolution of wireless technologies, users can access the Internet or hold
video conferences on their cell phones or digital personal assistants (PDAs).
These technologies offer tremendous potential, especially in education where
not only the short message service (SMS), but also the Instant Messaging (IM)
service is available. Mobile applications have now been spread, delivering billions
of SMS every month, with 5.20 billion mobile users worldwide [10].
The Internet’s most popular software, IM makes it so that users continue
to remain linked to the site for a long time, and also aims to promote a more
meaningful ”online community” as no other technology has done before. In-
stant Messenger, Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, and Microsoft Network
(MSN) Messenger are among the most popular IM applications. In addition to
user icons, all IM systems support avatars (a moving symbol depicting a human
in cyberspace or visuals of virtual reality).
4.5 E-education
Various interactive software such as wikis, blogs, podcasts, overleaf, GitHub, Git-
lab, learning management systems (LMS), campus management systems (CMS),
e-mailing and virtual platforms are being employed. It also emerges as a new
type of academic experience that brings social problems, history, ethics, and
learner interaction more thoroughly into account in response to the needs of post-
industrial society. This constant growth and the ongoing interplay of human,
organizational and technical influences has complicated efforts to examine the
contributions of different elements in e-learning and above all, our realization of
the connection between technology and learning.
Table 1 gives an overview of the tool and technologies used in various sectors
of human life. These tools have dramatically shifted the way of working in a very
positive and progressive direction.
5 Conclusion
We begin to move forward with the vision of cellular networking for beyond
5G/6G communications. With advantages such as improved employee efficiency
in an organization, reduced operational costs and time, collaborative technologies
have become an integral part of modern lifestyles. In this paper, we shed light on
the architecture of next-generation wireless communication with a perspective to
collaborative technologies. There is a strong correlation between the realization
of collaborative technologies and 6G key performance indicators (KPI) such as
URLLC, mMTC, and eMBB. We discussed the advantages, limitations, and risks
of collaborative technology implementation. Towards the end, the key enabling
technologies for terrestrial and non-terrestrial integrated networks (TaNTIN)
and elements of collaborative technologies are elaborated in detail.Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 9
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